Audiobus: Use your music apps together.

What is Audiobus?Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

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How do I play live through speakers with no latency?

I’ve never attempted to do this, I always play iPad instruments through my headphones and mix and such that way. What kind of adapter or interface do I need to hook it up to a speaker and play it without latency? I’ve got an iPad 2018 with headphone jack. Sorry this might be a fairly noobish question.

Comments

  • What kind of connection do you have on the other end?(at the amp/speakers?).
    A good start would be 3.5mm > what ever connection is in the other end. like RCA/Phono or something similar.

    Since you've already got a head-phone jack to start with that's enough, without a head-phone jack either a dongle (Lightning->3.5mm) or and audio interface is needed.

    If you're not sure, post pictures of the 'stuff' you intend to use.

  • @Samu said:
    What kind of connection do you have on the other end?(at the amp/speakers?).
    A good start would be 3.5mm > what ever connection is in the other end. like RCA/Phono or something similar.

    Since you've already got a head-phone jack to start with that's enough, without a head-phone jack either a dongle (Lightning->3.5mm) or and audio interface is needed.

    If you're not sure, post pictures of the 'stuff' you intend to use.

    Oh I see so basically it depends on what the speaker connection is? I tried one pair of speakers with just male to male 3.5mm headphone and the latency was horrible so I guess any other connection would be better? Would Lightning be better in general? I don’t have a specific pair of speakers in mind I was just wanted to know in general how to go about this for zero latency between playing iPad instruments and hearing them out of the external speakers

  • edited October 2019

    From what Im assuming is your set up you will not have any latency issues to worry about. Just stay away from bluetooth.
    Since you have a headphone jack you can simply take a 3.5 male to double male 1/4 inch cable and connect to your speakers (assuming they have 1/4 jacks).
    The other way would be to get an audio interface. There are many out there, some work well with ios others do not. I would recommend the Steinberg ur22 mkII.

  • @db909 said:
    I don’t have a specific pair of speakers in mind I was just wanted to know in general how to go about this for zero latency between playing iPad instruments and hearing them out of the external speakers

    There should be no noticeable latency difference between using headphones and speakers when using the 3.5mm jack.
    It's also worth to check the buffer-size in the apps you use, smaller buffer size = lower latency.

  • You add latency with any interface that uses a low bandwidth wireless network connection like Bluetooth. Bluetooth buffers up a batch of audio before forwarding it and will loose some packets and re-transmit them. Bluetooth audio has roughly 3x the latency of wired audio; that's an average of 224ms for Bluetooth audio vs 61ms for wired audio.

    Some apps do so much audio processing that they add excessive latency... guitar amp simulators or example. Many guitar players just won't use them if their fast picking skills are
    on the cutting edge.

    So, low latency apps with smaller buffer settings and solid wire connections to the speakers should work for you. Using a good quality audio interface to avoid adding extra noise that the headphone port adds is also a very good investment for a quality result with a low noise floor.

  • wimwim
    edited November 2019

    @db909 It doesn’t make sense that you would see any significant added latency with a wired connection to speakers via 3.5mm jack. There must have been something else going on there.

    Were they Bluetooth speakers? Is it possible the audio was going over Bluetooth even though you had a wire plugged in? We’re you heavily stoned, traveling faster than light, in a wormhole, or anything?

  • Let me add that while there are different Bluetooth standards, each compresses and decompresses audio in order to be able to send it over a low-bandwidth connection.
    Why?
    Because low bandwidth on an RF link means low power consumption, and that's what Bluetooth was invented for.
    Compression is the main source of latency, that's why MIDI over BT has much lower latency.

    By the way, if you're sitting 3.4 meters (11 feet) away from your speakers, that's already 10ms latency.

  • @db909 said:

    @Samu said:
    What kind of connection do you have on the other end?(at the amp/speakers?).
    A good start would be 3.5mm > what ever connection is in the other end. like RCA/Phono or something similar.

    Since you've already got a head-phone jack to start with that's enough, without a head-phone jack either a dongle (Lightning->3.5mm) or and audio interface is needed.

    If you're not sure, post pictures of the 'stuff' you intend to use.

    Oh I see so basically it depends on what the speaker connection is? I tried one pair of speakers with just male to male 3.5mm headphone and the latency was horrible so I guess any other connection would be better? Would Lightning be better in general? I don’t have a specific pair of speakers in mind I was just wanted to know in general how to go about this for zero latency between playing iPad instruments and hearing them out of the external speakers

    Ok so you haven't used Bluetooth.
    Describe your setup please.

  • I seem to recall that certain Bluetooth speakers introduce latency even when connecting devices via the aux in jack. Could this be the issue?

  • @onkey said:
    I seem to recall that certain Bluetooth speakers introduce latency even when connecting devices via the aux in jack. Could this be the issue?

    That could very well be one of the causes as well.
    Speakers with built in DSP can in some cases cause a few ms of extra latency.

    So yeah, we need more info from the OP to be able to assist further...

  • I've used various el-cheapo Bluetooth speakers via their Aux jack, and none of them introduced latency in that setup... but yeah, seems like some of them (ironically, probably the more expensive ones!) have an ADC on their Aux jack and then feed the audio into their usual digital processing circuitry before it gets output, adding latency.

    But as others have said, any "normal" fully analog audio connection (no matter if wired or wireless!), won't introduce any noticeable latency apart from the light travel time (wireless) or the "charges need to be knocked down the wire" time (wired, not much slower than light travel time).

  • Thanks for the info folks! Now that I think about it, when I experienced the latency, it was when I plugged into a friends speaker system and he had quite a bit wired up in various ways so it was likely just that particular setup. So I’ll just look for some non Bluetooth to be safe speakers and do the 3.5 jack first and go from there. Thank you!

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